Bøger af Karen Charlton

A corpse rises from the dead in the morgue at Guy's Hospital, and his missing pantaloons appear to be cursed as they roam the city, causing consternation and death wherever they go. What possible connection can this have to a gang of female jewel thieves and a pot of raspberry jam?There's a new man in charge at Bow Street Magistrates' Court and all is not well. His ambition is to split up Lavender and Woods - and to add to Lavender's woes, someone is leaking exaggerated stories about his investigations to The Times.Lavender is tasked with solving the theft of an aristocrat's precious jewels, while Woods is instructed to track down a libeller. But after a series of vicious murders and surprising coincidences, they discover that their apparently unconnected cases have more in common than they could ever have imagined. They disobey orders and work together to track down the killers. Faced with some of the most bizarre mysteries of their career, Lavender and Woods need all their cunning and guile to expose the devious secrets of their suspects, solve these deadly crimes - and prove to Magistrate Conant that as a team, they are so much greater than the sum of its parts.

Easter Monday, 1809: Kirkley Hall manor house is mysteriously burgled. When suspicion falls on Jamie Charlton, he and his family face a desperate battle to save him from the gallows.When £1,157 rent money is stolen from Kirkley Hall, it is the biggest robbery Northumberland has ever known. Suspicion soon falls on impoverished farm labourer, Jamie Charlton, and the unpopular steward, Michael Aynsley.Jamie Charlton is a loving family man but he is hot-tempered and careless. As the case grows against him, it seems that only his brother, William, can save him from an impending miscarriage of justice. But William is struggling with demons of his own. Desperate to break free from the tangled web of family ties which bind him to their small community, he is alarmed to find that he is falling in love with Jamie's wife. Set beneath the impenetrable gaze of a stray golden eagle whose fate seems to mirror that of Jamie's, 'Catching the Eagle' is a fictionalised account of a real trial that devastated a family and divided a community.

London, 1812. At a fashionable address in leafy Mayfair, a far cry from Detective Stephen Lavender's usual haunts, a man is found dead in his room. He has been brutally stabbed, but the door is locked from the inside and the weapon is missing.The deceased is David MacAdam, an Essex businessman with expensive tastes. As Lavender and Constable Ned Woods travel between London and Chelmsford seeking to understand MacAdam's final hours and unearth the grisly truth, they uncover a tangled web of deceit behind his stylish facade. The unusual circumstances of MacAdam's death are nothing compared to the shady nature of his life and it seems the house on Park Lane is at the heart of a dark conspiracy.But when a second body turns up, everything they think they've learned is thrown into doubt. Can Lavender and Woods find out who's behind these shocking murders before more lives are ruined?

On a cold February night in Regency London, a dark curtain falls on the Sans Pareil Theatre following the death of April Clare, a promising young actress, whose body is found in mysterious circumstances.Detective Stephen Lavender and his dependable deputy, Constable Woods, quickly discover that nothing is quite as it seems. As successive mysteries unfold, they soon realise that it is not only the actors from the Sans Pareil who are playing a part.With the Napoleonic War looming dangerously across the Channel, this is a time of suspicion and treachery. Following the clues from the seedy back streets of Covent Garden up through the echelons of society, Lavender and Woods begin to fear that the case is much bigger than theyΓÇÖd dared imagineΓÇöand worse, that they are at risk of becoming mere players in a master criminalΓÇÖs shadowy drama.It will take all of LavenderΓÇÖs skill and wit, and help from the beautiful Magdalena, to bring the mystery of the Sans Pareil Theatre to a dramatic conclusion in the final act.